My parents said they’d been grooming me to follow in their footsteps. However, their footsteps were too big for me to fill. They were the rock stars of mental health. They spoke at conferences and flew all over the world, and they still treated patients. Now, though, they only took the ones no one else could help.
Mom and Dad murmured to one another as they crossed the room.
“How many of them are there, again?” I heard my dad ask as he followed her to the door. He held her coffee cup high over his head, and she pretended to jump for it.
“There are at least four,” she said.
“That you’ve met,” he replied.
She breathed out a heavy sigh. “That I’ve met, yes.” She opened the door and then turned back. “Oh!” she cried and grinned at me. “Happy birthday!”
“Happy birthday, son,” my dad parroted.
I waved a hand at them, still hunched over my bowl of cereal, and watched them as they left. To be as smart as they were, my parents were a little scatter-brained.
I finished my cereal and put my empty bowl in the sink. I had to be at school in thirty minutes, but I still had time to see my girlfriend.
I walked to her house and she ran out the door to greet me. Aubrey had been my girlfriend since last year. We’d met on my fifteenth birthday. She was everything I wanted, and I think she wanted me just as much.
She was two months older than me, so she already had her driver’s license. I got in the passenger seat of her car and she leaned over to kiss me. “Happy birthday,” she muttered against my lips. She laid a small box in my lap, her hand all but shaking as she slid it across my thigh. “Open it,” she said. She covered her mouth and let out a little squeal, then leaned her head forward.
Her hair fell in a curtain around her face, so I pushed it back and tucked it behind her ear. “You don’t want to wait and give it to me at the party?” I asked.
She snorted. “I don’t think you’ll want to open this one in front of your parents.” She nodded toward the box. “Open it.”
I slowly untied the ribbon and lifted the lid. Everything in me froze when I saw the contents. On a small bed of cotton lay a single condom in a shiny blue foil wrapper. “Aubrey…” I looked up and met her eyes. “Are you sure?”
She nodded, catching her lower lip between her teeth, holding it for a moment, and then releasing it. “I’m sure.”
Although we’d been dating for a year and all our friends were doing it, we hadn’t done it yet. I’d been ready for quite a while, but she wasn’t. Or at least she hadn’t been. “You’re positive?” I asked.
She nodded, holding tightly to her lip again. “I’m positive,” she said decisively.
“This weekend?”
She nodded again, and then she leaned over to kiss me.
“We’re going to be late,” she said against my lips.
“I know,” I replied without truly lifting my lips from hers. I didn’t care. It was the best birthday ever, and I didn’t want to waste a minute of it.
* * *
I sat next to Aubrey, waiting for my parents to show up at my birthday dinner. They were thirty minutes late. Aubrey and I had already had two appetizers and my parents were still nowhere to be found. I looked up, searching the crowd, hoping they would show up soon.
Aubrey glanced down at her watch. “I have to be home by ten,” she reminded me.
It was already nine o’clock. My parents always ruined everything.
I supposed I could forgive them. I was going to have sex with my girlfriend this weekend. There was no way Mom and Dad could sink my mood.
The clearing of a throat broke me from my thoughts of sex and Aubrey. I looked up to find someone looking down at me. She had long hair that hung around her shoulders like a blanket. It was the color of the scotch my dad drank at night in his office, and it was completely straight. I stood up, because what else could I do in the presence of such beauty.
“Mason?” she asked. She tugged on the long sleeve of her black ribbed turtleneck. She had it tucked into a pair of tight blue jeans. Yet she looked classy and sophisticated.
“Yes?” I said.
She jerked a thumb toward the door. “Your mom went to the restroom, and your dad is parking the car. They said to come and find you.” She laughed, and I felt like the sound of it settled into my soul and made me happy too. A grin tugged at my lips. She stuck out a hand. “I’m Lynn.”